WT - Final Race Report 2008

Last night was the final race in the series, and the whole gang was on hand for the final party. At risk was my brother's third place in his age group, but he mostly just had to finish upright to hold off his challengers and keep his spot. Everyone else was locked out of finishing in the money, myself included sadly :(

Personally though, I was ready for my best effort of the season. I was feeling very good, and have felt stronger and stronger as the weeks have passed and my knee has been feeling better. I was hoping to pull off a strong run and determined to push hard the whole way.

It was a bigger crowd again, the race has grown tremendously and gotten very popular. The size has an impact for sure, especially in the swim as I got bumped a lot. Overall, a good swim, and my quickest of the year by a few seconds. The bike was also good, I pushed very hard and managed to pass a lot of people. Unfortunately, the last 1/2 mile or so I had chain issues, dropping it once and making tons of noise and making me nervous the rest of the way. I took it easy to try not to cause any more problems. Ended up with my fastest bike split of the year (27:39), but I still felt that I could have been faster.

Started the run feeling good and running hard. I didn't slow for the first hill, and just kept running as fast as I could. I had hoped to hold off Brendan who's the quickest runner among the family group. I hit the last uphill feeling that I had done it when he went past me. I tried desperately to stay with him, but he pulled away on the hill and then I couldn't reel him in over the finish line sprint. I did still finish with a great run time, (27:39) also my fastest time of the year and finished with a year best (obviously) of 1:02:49.

Disappointed a bit that it's the last race of the year... but I'm motivated again to hit the off-season hard and be much faster out of the gate next year.

Final results here: http://www.plattsys.com/results/res2008/wt0810.htm